“No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”
Ephesians 2: 8-10 (The Message)

I went on the Boston Urban Plunge 2010 with Ephesians 2 in mind. God calls us to do good works—not because we need to do good to be saved, but because he has plans for us that involve doing the “right thing” and helping others. Having been on service-oriented Spring Break trips for the past two years, I envisioned that BUP would be more of the same, just with Bible study added in. I thought that I would go on BUP as a senior leader in Greek IV ready to answer questions or guide discussions from underclassmen.

I went into BUP this Spring Break underestimating God.

From day one, it was evident that I would not be in my by-now comfortable position as a leader in the group. When we were asked to buy groceries to feed all 23 of us for the week, rather than stepping up and organizing the shopping expedition, I found myself stressed out by the process and overwhelmed by the task. I withdrew from the group, knowing that despite my age, I had never actually been responsible for shopping for a week’s worth of groceries or cooking for other people before. That should have been wake-up call number one that BUP was not going to be the Spring Break I envisioned. Though I didn’t see God’s hands pointing me in a new direction quite yet, grocery shopping did make me realize that I live in a world where I am not responsible for putting food on the table or even for picking it up from the store. My sorority house even has a chef, a luxury I haven’t appreciated enough. I’ve lived a privileged life, and through BUP I entered into a community (Dorchester) where most don’t get the luxuries that my family was blessed to afford.

Potential wake-up call number two also occurred on the first day, while we played a game called “Star Power.” The game illustrates through three rounds of complicated point-trading that once a person is stuck in the cycle of poverty, it is nearly impossible to advance economically. Divided into three classes, the BUP-ers soon took on the rolls that befit their class, with the uppermost cooperating to protect their status, the middles competing against each other to advance, and the lowest coming to terms with their lot in life. Though I had played the game before, a new realization hit me this time, since I was in the lowest class from beginning to end. Even within the limits of the game, the members of the lowest class felt helpless to impact our destinies. The poor in Star Power (and it is not too much of a stretch to apply this to reality) lacked freedom to change their status. Even when given the opportunity to ask the rich to make laws for the benefit of the poor—because in this game, if not in real life, the rich make the rules—we did not think radically enough to actually affect meaningful change, and we remained poor despite handouts and other rules that drew attention to our plight.

Each successive day brought a new challenge to my vision of how my senior year Spring Break would be. We heard a talk about race on day two, and during the discussion I sat and listened to new facts in the same story I heard virtually ever year in school: racism is real, it is wrong, and white people throughout our history are to blame for many of America’s current racial problems. This was not new news to me, so while I felt bad that things are the way they are, I didn’t feel much more than that. After this discussion ended, however, things changed. A fellow BUP-er who happens to be biracial approached myself and another white girl on the trip and asked “Doesn’t that make you mad?” I replied honestly, saying that I get mad that things exist the way they do and that I wish certain ethnicities were not victims of personal or systemic racism. However, this BUP-er was not just asking another mundane question. What she meant, as she went on to explain, is that white people are always blamed for current problems during discussions of race such as the one we just sat through. This question, phrased in a way that I had never heard before, initiated my descent into what I like to call The Tension.

I have a feeling that many people live in The Tension every day. Though I cannot read their minds or share their experience with them, I cannot deny that women and men of minority ethnic status must struggle with issues of who to blame, accept, exclude, embrace, learn from, teach, and interact with every day of their lives. To a white girl who grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC, which were not all-white but were mostly all-middle class, The Tension was a strange and unpleasant place to be. I wanted to leave, to go back to just feeling bad that injustices often happen to be drawn down racial lines, but I found that I was unable to. The Tension held me, and day by day at BUP I grew sicker at heart. In The Tension, my thoughts moved beyond “who caused this?” to “what can solve this?” There is already a multitude of outreach and educational programs going on in Boston alone. While each program can present success stories, the system that produces more criminals than college graduates among blacks and Latinos in Boston remains intact. What would work? Was it hopeless? Would good people continue to strive against an unmovable wall, ultimately succumbing to the knowledge that they did a little bit to make lives of a few people better, but that it was not enough? Why had I decided to do BUP at all, if in the end my efforts don’t create change?

Once again, as I later learned, I underestimated God.

In the midst of The Tension, Caroline, one of the Greek IV staff, led Bible study. After reading and discussing Luke 13: 10-17, Caroline led us to this concluding challenge and question: Look through God’s eyes as we serve people this week. Is there something stopping you from healing or seeking God’s children? Why, yes, as a matter of fact, there was something stopping me from seeking God’s children in those that we served this week. I was stuck in The Tension! When I went to the Cambridge Community Center to help with the After School Program on the next four days of BUP, I couldn’t help but feel judged—did the employees at CCC think that I was just another white person of privilege descending to help the poor for kicks during Spring Break? Did the kids that I interacted with think that I looked strange, or that I was mean just because of my skin color? Would I be able to befriend anyone here, or would people hold back from getting to know me because my people, “white” people, are the reason that black people have suffered so much racial prejudice and economic injustice in America?

I had a lot of questions when I was in The Tension, and these questions just kept coming, with no answer in sight. Caroline could see that this was distracting me from getting to the heart of her challenge to us. After Bible study, she sat and talked and prayed with me, and she told me something that jolted me awake out of my fog of questions: There is an answer to the “who is to blame” and “what is the solution” questions that had started my spin into confusion. Humanity is to blame; starting with the fall from grace in Eden, we continue to hurt each other and we remain ultimately a broken people. Jesus is the solution; God tried for many generations to create laws or institutions that would bring his broken people back into relationship with him, and ultimately He had to send His own son to die for us as a sacrifice. Through Jesus we are set free of the history of our personal sins—so why would we dare think Him incapable of setting us free from the corporate, institutional sins that led us to the way things are today? As we prayed, I felt a release from the weight that burdened me since we started discussing racial injustice. Of course! Why didn’t that occur to me in the first place? Jesus sought out people who were different than the majority population to be a part of his ministry, often bringing up issues of race and ability. Why should I have tried to take up the burden of fixing a system that had been broken since the dawn of history, when Jesus already did that for us? The relief that this last question brought was soon met by my own stubborn memory, which brought to mind Ephesians 2 again. Just because Jesus is the solution does not mean that I don’t have a role to play in God’s plan. There is work for me to do, and I had better be doing it. I am not called to merely follow laws set before me and stand as an example for others. Jesus calls us to do more.

Later in BUP, Aaron, the other Greek IV staff worker, reaffirmed what my mind had told me. There is not an easy way to achieve racial reconciliation. Though we are already forgiven for our faults and failures through our faith in Jesus Christ, we are called to be more than believers. Just as Jesus sought to fish all men, we are meant to intentionally love those who are different than ourselves. This love is intentional in that it is not easy, nor is it passive. Jesus did not merely tell people he loved them—had he done that, I doubt his ministry would have gotten beyond Nazareth. Instead, Jesus acted out of love for all those that he considered his sheep. He healed the blind and he made clean the impure. His love was not just a statement or a feeling, it was also an action. Likewise we are meant to act out our love for others.

This active love is a difficult thing for me to do, because while I feel bad that others are less blessed than I am and I serve them through various volunteer opportunities, I have missed God’s call to combine the feeling and the action into love rather than pity. Being pitied will not get the children of CCC to college. But, dedicating my time to them and being a consistent, active person on their life journey will show them love that words would not adequately express. Through that love, barriers of race, economics, and education will break down. Knowing that this breaking down of inequalities is possible, that through the love Jesus shows us we find the ability to enact change in the world, is life altering. Since I was raised by parents who emphasized integrity of mind and deed, and as an MIT-trained engineer, I cannot go back to a broken system when the solution is before me. I cannot go back to merely feeling bad in discussions of race. Regardless of who started the world’s problems, I know that Jesus will finish them, and until He comes again, I can and will actively love those around me and seek out those different than me. To adapt a well known Robert Frost verse, I choose the love less traveled by, and that will make all the difference.

God woke me up during BUP, and I do not plan to fall back asleep for a long, long time.

All six InterVarsity fellowships at the University of Texas – Austin came together to put on Not for Sale, an outreach event to raise awareness about human trafficking and God’s heart to see it eradicated.  During the week leading up to the event, InterVarsity students wore t-shirts and created quite a buzz on campus. 400 students attended our event, which began with interactive displays highlighting different facets of human trafficking. The Greek display focused on the issue of sweat shop labor around the globe. We highlighted which companies still use sweat shop labor and those that do not. A speaker from International Justice Mission shared some stories of people set free from slavery and we concluded the night with a call for real change in the world and in individual lives. 3 students decided to make that change and follow Jesus and many more have been undeniably moved to raise awareness about this issue.

Sally continued to attend Greek IV sporadically and she began to get to know one of our guy leaders, Sam.  Sam lives a very sacrificial life style, both with his time and money.  He serves the Lord through Greek IV, his church and volunteering with those less fortunate in our town.  Every Sunday, Sam takes the same homeless man to Church and then the two enjoy a bite to eat.  One day, I called Sally, and asked her again about where did God fit into her life.  She told said that it was funny I asked because the day before she had gone to church with Sam.  Sally was surprised when Sam picked her up and then drove down to the tent city to pick up his homeless friend.  She was even more surprised that Sam treated the man like his friend and wasn’t afraid to share his life or wealth with the man.  When she asked him why he was so willing to give to this man, he told her because Jesus had done the same for him . She was honestly surprised, and asked him what Sam had ever done wrong that was really that bad. He began to talk about things that she did all the time.  On the phone, Sally was shocked.  She couldn’t understand why Sam’s faith caused him to act differently.  She started to talk about all the older students whose lives were different and she said she wanted to have that type of faith.

Sally is loved by our community, and that love has begun to share the gospel with her.  It is exciting to see Sally inspired to have a relationship with Jesus. Equally exciting, is seeing a new community reaching out as a community.

Five Northwestern students sensed God’s calling to spend eight summer weeks in Lawndale, one of the poorer, primarily African-American neighborhoods in inner-city Chicago, on InterVarsity’s Chicago Urban Program. During the weekdays, they serve as co-teachers (in partnership with Lawndale-native college kids) at a church-run summer school to help Lawndale kids get ahead. In the evenings, they learn about issues of justice and racial reconciliation from a Christian per-spective. “We weren’t really close in the beginning,” Jenny confesses to me, just out of earshot of the group. “We’re very different. None of us would have hung out on campus.” Yet here they are, living in close community in an apartment in Lawndale for eight weeks, with restricted email and cell phone access, and a stipend for groceries that forces them to shop with each other’s in-terests in mind.

In my dinner visits throughout the summer, I learn more about the team. Rob, a twenty-year-old Chinese-American about to enter medical school, loses his appetite when he cooks, so he just watches us eat his creations and tells us about his family. Sarah, the lone white Greek I-V student on the team, struggles with her co-teacher’s approach to curriculum development as they teach fifth-graders together. Joe just graduated from NU and asks mostly for prayer for his own ability to focus on a disciplined., vibrant relationship with God. Emily, who just finished her freshmen year, expresses her despair and outrage at the seemingly impossible nature of helping her stu-dents reach reading levels appropriate to their age. “The system is failing them. And I feel like we’re failing them. We’re not doing enough while we’re here.” Jenny agrees heartily, wishing more of her kindergarteners had time with the reading specialist. She also wonders why her co-teacher doesn’t seem to like her.

I share about my own journey in our multiethnic neighborhood, how it’s easy to make assump-tions about people of another culture and how much it’s helped me to actively build relationships instead of judging. We talk about ways they can help kids this summer and how they can use their future career and lifestyle choices to help the poor. By my next visit, Sarah tells me that she and her co-teacher have become allies in the classroom. “He stood up for me to the kids,” she shares proudly. Rob and Emily ask me to pray for them to know God’s calling on their lives. “What if God is calling us to live in a place like Lawndale? Can you still follow God and be comfortable?”

It hasn’t been an easy summer for the students. They’ve wrestled with issues of race, money, food, conflict, authenticity, and justice. The Chicago Urban Program staff team have ministered to the students and run the program daily, while three of us NU staff have visited them in Lawndale throughout the summer, to help them process the experience now and when they return to cam-pus. We’ve prayed hard for breakthroughs for the students in the times when they’ve seemed stuck, maybe in the same ways that Jesus prayed for his disciples before he left. I’m encouraged to see God growing them in visible and invisible ways, each time I visit. Last I heard, Rob finally connected with the Lawndale Medical Clinic (run by the church we partner with), after begging any LMC doctors he ran into on the street, to give him a tour, and found his home. Sarah asked me on our last visit, “How can we talk more about social justice at Greek I-V this fall?”

Our hope is that these students encounter God in powerful ways that last a lifetime, both in per-sonal discipleship, in their ability to engage in Christian community, and in understanding God’s heart for justice for all people. Please pray with me that God impacts each one in these last days of the program, as well as in their reentry weeks to come.

 Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/senor_codo/

We saw that as Caucasian, upper middle class Americans we were oblivious to what was going on around us…just a few neighborhoods away. We learned about God’s heart to make right all that has gone wrong in the world as a result of sin. We were challenged to think about what our role as individuals could be in this redemption process.

Lauren’s service for three days was in the neighborhood of Cabrini Green working with Kid’s Club, an after school program. The kid’s received help with their homework, learned about Jesus through chapel and other fun activities like chorus, praise dancing, bucket drumming and art. Lauren will never be the same as a result of this week, and neither will the three Greek IV women who went with her.

God also moved mightily on the Habitat for Humanity trip Brian led. There are three reasons why we go on a Habitat trip each year: first, to serve those in need and fight against poverty, second, for the students in Greek IV to grow deeper friendships with one another as they serve together, and third, to bring some non-Christians on the trip to see God through experiencing scripture and Christian community. All three goals were accomplished this year.

Of the 13 students on the trip, three were not yet Christians. One student in particular, James, had not come to any Greek IV activities at U of I before going on the Habitat trip. He went on the trip because one of his fraternity brothers was going and invited him to come along. James said that the Habitat experience has motivated him to look for answers to the tough questions that were preventing him from believing in and following Jesus. Since returning to campus, James has joined the Greek IV community and also attended Chapter Focus Week after the semester ended.

Two years ago, Amy became the Director of Finance for the Fulfillment Fund, a nonprofit college access organization that helps promising yet educationally underserved and economically disadvantaged students graduate from high school and complete college. The students she works with come from the lowest performing schools in Los Angeles where the graduation rate is less than 45% district wide. But 70% of the students in her program graduate from high school and out of those, 90% go on to college. Amy says this:

“It is great to be a part of an organization that is trying to make a positive difference in the lives of students and by extension, the community. I love being able to use both my financial and my legal background to make the world a better place.”

Beyond work, Amy is a six time participant in the Breast Cancer 60 mile walk, teaches a kindergarten Sunday school class at church, volunteers weekly with elementary girls in the church Awana program, and leads a weekly church small group in her home with her husband.

Andy Dalton, Amy’s former staff worker and current National Director of Greek InterVarsity says, “As her staff worker, I have very fond memories of how God met Amy at IU and worked through her to share His message with her sorority sisters. But I can honestly say that I am just as excited now to hear how God is using Amy as a World Changer. In my eyes, she is a joyous representation of the 7000 graduates that God has reached through the ministry of Greek InterVarsity over the past 15 years.”

Join us in praying for the more than 2000 Greek students across the country presently involved in this ministry, that they too would become World Changers wherever God calls them.